“What? Shall we receive good at the hand of God and shall we not accept evil?”— Job 2:10 The streets around the bridge always put me on edge. Homeless people congregate around the massive stone pylons, using them as buttresses for their provisional squats. The area is fairly sheltered, and because it’s well known as a homeless hangout, residents are pretty much left in peace to haul out their shopping carts and tarps at night. Most of them clear away during the day—a fact that confounds Steph. She struggles with the concept of anyone fitting all their belongings into one lone shopping cart. Last time we’d gotten stuck at this end of town, she’d speculated to no end as to where all the shopping carts and their loot are hidden during the day. I mean, she has a point. They must go somewhere. By the time we turned onto a small side street, the last of the daylight was gone and there were no streetlamps. The evening was clear and there was a bite in the air, but the absence of light always unnerves me, and, of course, exiles—whether once of light or dark—prefer to play in the cover of night. Entertaining themselves with the pain of humans is high on the to-do list for exiles. They have the power to infiltrate imagination and pretty much put whatever horror takes their fancy inside someone’s head. Some of them use it to taunt and frighten, while others use it as a kind of strategy. Over time, according to Griffin, they’ve used this ability to throw humans off their tracks entirely. Apparently, that’s where the myths of vampires, werewolves, and other things creepy, even fairies and elves, come from. If exiles sense that their supernatural power has been detected and they are not able to eliminate the problem using their preferred method of slaughter, they simply reveal themselves as something other than human, anything but what they really are. It makes sense. I was learning that people are, on the whole, more at ease believing in vampires or aliens than vengeful angels intent on a biblical Armageddon. Yes, we are naïve by choice. The narrow street was littered with homeless people lying on flattened cardboard, the lucky ones wrapped in torn sleeping bags, the rest burrowed in piles of old newspapers. I scanned the brick walls, which ran at least five stories high on each side. The protection they offered was part of what made this strip so popular. Lincoln walked slowly beside me, his hand going to my elbow for a moment—a silent reminder that I needed to be alert. I tried to ignore the flush of heat that came whenever I felt his touch. I stopped walking and he looked at me, a question in his emerald-green eyes. I smiled before I could stop myself. “I think I can sense them,” I said. I didn’t think; I knew. I’d been tasting apple for the past couple of blocks, and the sound of birds flying, smashing through trees, was not one heard by others nearby. These are my angelic senses.
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